Saturday, August 17, 2013

Long time readers have heard me
mention that studying history helps us understand the future and under my blog
title it says “The future has already happened”. I believe that human behavior repeats itself
generation after generation, as we can easily see if we go back and look.

The philosopher Santayana put it differently when he said, “Those
who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” I disagree. History
repeats itself because of the character of man, not his neglect of history, and
no matter how diligent we might be at studying the past, we still can’t escape
from ourselves.

The study of antiquity becomes more interesting when we
realize that people have always acted the same. We see these behaviors repeat
in cycles and can compare them to what’s happening in the world today. Even
though we have developed a brain capable of taking us beyond what mere
“animalness” can accomplish, we’re still animals. Yes, we developed civilization
quickly – the pottery wheel,
agriculture, trade, cities, metallurgy, armies, political systems – all between
4000 B.C. and 500 B.C, but we remain jealous, hateful, militant, distrustful,
power hungry, and greedy.

I recently came across a paper by Ian Morris, professor of
Antiquity at Stanford. The paper, “The Collapse and Regeneration of Complex Society
in Greece, 1500-500 B.C”, was written in 2005. I plan to discuss this paper in a
future post but for now I would like to discuss Professor Morris himself. Not
being familiar with his work, I looked him up and discovered his recent book,
“Why the West Rules for Now.” I read a review where it was mentioned that
Morris was summoned to CIA headquarters to talk about his book.

Spooks into antiquity? Go figure! Reminds me of the FBI
interrogation of Indiana Jones when they were trying to understand Hitler’s
interest in the occult.

So what is it this time?

Why the West Rules tells the history of the world and
then reduces the accomplishments of societies to an equation. Morris believes
that history moves forward as a giant amorphous mass and is only minimally
influenced by individuals or ideas. To him, there are three main forces acting
on society: geography, climate, and the paradox of development. The latter
refers to the fact that societal development is accompanied by forces which
tend to undermine its progress.

And people are the problem. “Change is caused by lazy, greedy, frightened
people looking for easier, more profitable, and safer ways to do things. And
they rarely know what they’re doing.”

Morris
has developed a theorem which claims that by mathematics one can determine which is the dominant culture on earth at any one time, and further, the formula can be
used to predict the future. An index derived from the theorem is calculated
using four characteristics of a society: energy capture per capita, social
organization, the capacity to wage war, and the level of information
technology. Each of these factors is assigned a value up to 250 so when we add
them together we get a maximum index value of 1000.

The
book compares the score of the Eastern world against the Western world throughout
history and concludes that the East will regain superiority in 2103.

By the
way, what did the spooks want? They wanted to understand Morris’ theories so
they could incorporate them into a National Intelligence Council report
documenting global trends, to be used to guide the next administration. I
wonder how they validated his theory? Did they just accept it as the truth
coming out of research by an expert in history? Who knows.

I
have two large problems with Morris’ book and the reception to it. Let’s start with the latter. To
quote one of the reviews of the book,

“Morris's success at finding an audience for that big story comes
at a time of anxiety about the waning
influence of historians, whose work is often hyper-specialized. Kenneth
Pomeranz, president of the American Historical Association, recently lamented that "our space in the public sphere has been
diminished to the benefit of fields like economics."

The reviewer plays this game – “Look
history is relevant again. It’s useful”, as if he had a clue about the subject.
And then we have the following:

“Why the West Rules won praise
in publications like The Economist and the Financial
Times, which called it "the first history of the world that really
makes use of what modern technology can offer to the interpretation of the
historical process."

Which brings me to my second problem.
I don’t buy the notion that history has to create some way to be relevant in
order to impart value. It doesn’t need a technological methodology at all,
because it’s one of the subjects of the Humanities, not the computer science
department.

Morris reminds me of what’s wrong
with the progressive movement. Its adherents have substituted science for God,
and worse, they believe their science. Remember that FDR intended to appoint a
board of economists who were going to dictate policy to all American
corporations as part of an industrial plan. Funny to think anyone thought something
as complicated as our economy could be reduced to a set of equations.

But here we have Morris trying to do
the same with history. Who said there are four factors that influence the
accomplishments of a society? Who says they should be equally weighted? Why go
through the exercise when the assumptions are faulty? Now I’m not ready to
condemn the factors and trends Morris cites. He is a well-respected historian. But
when you quantify something, people assume the numbers are useful for
comparison purposes, and they parse them up way beyond their relevance.

And I have do have a complaint about
the foundation ideas of the theorem and index. Morris is materialistic – a little
bit Marxian. His theorem gives no credit to ideas as contributors to the
success of societies, like no one ever thought of something that really
mattered. Huh?

I guess if it sells books and gets
the spooks interested it has value. We trust the spooks, don’t we?

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Durham University is launching a new MA in International Cultural Heritage Management,
designed for people interested in exploring how cultural heritage shapes and
reflects people’s lives, hopes and memories around the world and interested in
contributing to the complex challenges of developing cultural heritage in a
changing world. This programme aims to introduce students to the issues
involved in global cultural heritage management as a foundation for both
professional and academic future paths. It builds on Durham University’s unique
situation, living and studying within a World Heritage Site, to examine
tangible and intangible heritage with an international, national and local
focus. Students will explore the concepts underlying the idea of cultural
heritage and investigate the social, political and economic impact of a variety
of heritage organisations using international case studies, normally undertake
a placement and choose either a detailed management plan or a dissertation to
complete their degree.

A few places are still available for the
October 2013 entry, together with some bursary funding to support international
(non-EU) students’ fees.

To learn more about the MA, please contact Dr
Mary M Brooks, Director, MA International Cultural Heritage Management at mary.brooks@durham.ac.uk to arrange
for an informal discussion by telephone or skype.

The website gives a chronology of the dig, starting in 2005
and continuing through this year. In addition, the dig team is introduced and the dig site described. Take a look.

Zominthos is interesting as a Minoan settlement for several
reasons. It is on the path between Knossos and Idaion Andron, the great
sanctuary cave on the peak of Mount Ida and there is evidence of a permanent
settlement there dating from 1800 B.C. The current excavation involves a
building at 1200 meters elevation, which is higher than any other Minoan or
Cretan structure. Was it a stopover for those pilgrims heading for the
sanctuary? Unlikely, because the structure has certain palatial elements
implying its use by the wealthy.

The building contains at least forty rooms and covers some
1350 square meters on the main floor. Adjacent, is a pottery workshop
unique in Minoan Crete.

The building was abandoned around 1600 B.C. after the
volcanic eruption at the Greek island of Santorini. For more details on the
latter, see my post from May 13th, 2011.

Although I’m academically trained, my
degree is not in ancient history, so exposure to new research in the subject is
a necessary activity for me. I always want to use current academic thinking as
a compass for my own work and try to rub elbows with academics whenever
possible. The lens through which academics look at ancient history gets
adjusted over time as points of view change so like other disciplines it’s an
evolving subject. Ancient writers have been analyzed ad nauseam, so it remains
for archaeology to help us gain new knowledge through their uncovering of new
artifacts. And it’s a slow process.

This blog is designed to walk the
line between purely academic treatment of my subject and a more general
discussion. My goals have always been twofold: show how history is interesting,
unlike the way it is taught in school, and give dedicated readers some meat to
chew on. I want to get into the details of the story in a way that enlightens
and challenges the minds of my readers.

Below are two examples of papers
presented at the annual meeting, which I outline to give the reader a sense of
the proceedings.

One paper was called “Ex Usuris:
interest, Investment, and Economic Growth in North Africa”. Ex Usuris means “of
interest” and in this context the author described how Roman officials took
money from the people either through taxation or other means but then often used
that money to invest back into the local economic system. Using this technique,
they could take economic control away from the natives and determine which
projects received funding and were allowed to move forward. Along the way, they
made sure that the money they spent contributed, and even glorified, their
reputation in the community.

Another paper was titled “The
Professionalism of Advocacy in the Late Roman Empire”. It discussed how qualifications to
practice law evolved in the late Empire under the influence of the church. In
the beginning, men could not me appointed as lawyers unless they had training
in the law. Later the credentialing became much more sophisticated, specifying
no conflict with imperial duties, sound birth status, and personal
eloquence. Lastly the requirement was
added that the advocate support the Christian religious orthodoxy. In this
small example, we see the structure of the church becoming a disciplinary substitute
for the decaying structure of the Roman political system.

Esoteric stuff, no doubt, but each
piece contributes to our knowledge of the ancient world. The body of work on
any subject is like clay that gets re-molded by each generation of academics. I
suspect much of the change is fashion but the truth gets sorted out over time. Ancient
history has its unique limitations, as I have mentioned, most notably the
impact of time on the preservation of the facts. We were pretty deep into the
history before we had any historians to write things down, and of course it was
Herodotus who helped get things going.

Thank goodness there are so many good
stories to tell. The Romans and Greeks are the fathers of us all through their
creation of the theoretical (Greek) and practical (Roman) foundations of
western civilization. They give us a glimpse of modern society in its embryonic
form and if we take the time to go on the journey, we can watch man invent
political systems as he gave up being a nomad and settled into urban life.